On a cold winters day, a group of porcupines huddled together to stay warm and keep from freezing. But soon they felt one anothers quills and moved apart. When the need for warmth brought them closer together again, their quills again forced them apart. They were driven back and forth at the mercy of their discomforts until they found the distance from one another that provided both a maximum of warmth and a minimum of pain. In human beings, the emptiness and monotony of the isolated self produces a need for society. This brings people together, but their many offensive qualities and intolerable faults drive them apart again. The optimum distance that they finally find that permits them to coexist is embodied in politeness and good manners. Because of this distance between us, we can only partially satisfy our need for warmth, but at the same time, we are spared the stab of one anothers quills.
More Quotes from Arthur Schopenhauer:
Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.Arthur Schopenhauer
Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.
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The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.
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No one can transcend their own individuality.
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Ordinary people merely think how they shall spend their time a man of talent tries to use it.
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They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
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Based on Topics: Courtesy Quotes, Forgiveness Quotes, Manner Quotes, Pain Quotes, Society & Civilization Quotes, Time QuotesBased on Keywords: coexist, discomforts, freezing, huddled, optimum, porcupines, quills
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